International Project

My international project group mentioned the topic of activities that can be accomplished on the train, which is kind of interesting. I don't know that many of the Tokyo people on trains get a whole lot finished in that time, but there surely are many things going on in that time.

There are a lot of sleepy people on the trains. They seem to ride the trains just to sleep. It always makes me feel uncomfortable when the person next to me sleeps and I never sleep on the train.

There are many readers and sodoku players. Most people are reading their book or their manga just to pass time. I always look at the books people are reading and if the book is in English I'll try to start a conversation. In doing this I've met a mother that was reading in English so that she could keep up with her children. She had raised them in the states for a while and so they spoke great English. She had borrowed her book from her daughter. I also met a business man who had been studying English for 20+ years. He was originally interested in it because of the Beetles, but then he said he had just continued to study. What I thought was most interesting about him was that he had an English news paper and he was highlighting the words he didn't know.

The people on their phones are my favorite because I think everybody uses their phone as a sort of back-up plan. If you've forgotten your book or music, you can just whip out your phone and do something on that.

I don't know if we'll end up doing anything with the activities on transportation systems for the International Project, but it's an interesting thing to notice on trains.